Tourism brochures for Norfolk Island spruik a pristine paradise, but an ugly quandary is dividing residents — whether to dump their used cars in the ocean or ship them back to Australia.

Key points:

With fewer than 2,000 residents, the cost of removing waste from Norfolk island is prohibitively expensive

The new regional council has seen waste dumping drop 70 per cent

End-of-the-road vehicles are becoming a problem, as transporting them off the island by long boat is costly and dangerous

Situated 1,412 kilometres east of mainland Australia, the remote island has long grappled with the cost of processing its waste.

For decades, the remote island's official policy was to burn used cars and push them off a steep cliff into marine park waters, and unlike most mainland communities there is no household bin collection service.